Frankfurt / AFP The European Central Bank has become too powerful, but largely because politicians have foisted an increasingly political role onto it, one of the German government’s key economic advisors said in a newspaper interview on Sunday. “The ECB has gained enormous power, even though it is not answerable to any parliamentary control. I take a critical view ...

  Bloomberg Mark Carney defended the Bank of England against political critics furious at his warnings about the dangers posed by a European Union exit, and described the British economy as facing similar uncertainty to the early 1990s. “We’re taking a judgment as a committee, and we’re changing policy because of it, we’re putting out billions of pounds of liquidity ...

  Bloomberg A year of profit stagnation has left the S&P 500 Index’s price-earnings ratio flirting with some of its highest readings since the Internet bubble. Judged against bonds, though, stocks remain stubbornly cheap. Plotting the index’s per-share earnings against the yield on the 10-year Treasury note, a technique sometimes referred to as the Fed Model, shows the S&P 500 ...

  Bloomberg Williams Cos. said Energy Transfer Equity LP is breaching a merger agreement “through a pattern of delay and obstruction” and asked a court in Delaware to prevent the pipeline operator from terminating the deal. Energy Transfer — which offered $43.50 a share, or $37.7 billion, for rival Williams in September — said May 5 that the multibillion-dollar takeover ...

  SANTO DOMINGO / AP Dominicans faced a dizzying array of choices on Sunday in one of the most complex ballots in recent history, with eight candidates for president, all 222 members of Congress up for re-election and thousands of people vying for local offices around the country. For many voters it amounts to a referendum on whether to let President ...

  Bloomberg GN Store Nord A/S, the world’s third-largest listed producer of hearing aids, signed a conditional agreement to buy Audigy Group LLC in a deal that could value the U.S. audiology and hearing services company at as much as $151 million. GN will pay $91 million up front and as much as $60 million more depending on Audigy’s financial ...

  Bloomberg Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro announced undefined “military exercises” for the embattled nation, just a day after pledging to prolong his government’s special emergency powers. Speaking in Caracas’s Ibarra Square after a march on Saturday by several hundred supporters, Maduro said his opponents are orchestrating foreign military intervention in Venezuela. Exercises by the army and militia groups would prepare ...

  Bloomberg Federally mandated ethanol blending is adding extra pressure to the faltering profits of U.S. refiners. The worst crude oil downturn in a generation, which at first helped refiners’ profits, has now passed through to the fuel prices. Now, gasoline is cheaper than the ethanol that refiners have no choice but to use. Ethanol averaged 30 cents above gasoline ...

  Aden / AFP A suicide bombing claimed by the IS group and a second attack killed 37 police on Sunday in the Yemeni port of Mukalla where a year of Al-Qaeda rule ended last month, medics said. It was the second attack in days claimed by IS in the city of 200,000 people that was recaptured by government forces ...

  Beirut / AFP Fighting raging between rival extremist rebel factions to control a key opposition stronghold near Damascus since late last month has killed more than 300 fighters, a monitor said on Sunday. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the clashes in Eastern Ghouta pitted Jaish Al-Islam faction, which has been taking part in peace talks in Geneva, against ...